Alma and How She Got Her Name written and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

A Big Mooncake for Little Star written and illustrated by Grace Lin

The Rough Patch written and illustrated by Brian Lies

Thank You, Omu! written and illustrated by Oge Mora

The Caldecott goes back to 1938. Some previous winners: Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey; Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans; Stone Soup by Marcia Brown; Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss; Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak…

Those are the two awards which get the most attention, but there are actually a whole slew of them, including five different ones named after Coretta Scott King.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

I lauded it then, and still think it’s a great thing. We have one in our neighborhood. They are small glass (?) fronted bookshelves…sort of looking like a large dollhouse. People leave paperbooks (p-books) in there, and can also borrow them (well, I suppose many don’t bring them back)…no charge. It’s just a way to share the love of literature.

while my Significant Other is asleep…having the former control the TV, having the latter tell me the weather and such (the first one’s wake word is “Alexa”, the Show’s is “Echo”). Whisper Mode is perfect for that.

However…

One thing that surprised me is that Alexa sounds much more realistic to me when whispering. So realistic, in fact, that it creeps me out a bit…my Significant Other had the same reaction.

series…I answered it, and so did one of my author siblings. 🙂 You are, of course, welcome to answer them as well…sometimes, other people do.

Here’s the basic idea:

When something appears fully human, we are comfortable with it. When something appears to wholly non-human (like a cartoon character), we are also comfortable.

When something is close to human, but isn’t (such as an android which never blinks), it bothers us. The Uncanny Valley isn’t a place…it’s a dip in a comfort horizontal line graph. It’s closer to the fully human side than the wholly non-human side.

That may be, unfortunately, an evolutionary thing. Some people have a visceral reaction when they see someone who has a physical (or even behavioral) difference which could be perceived as a future challenge for the species if it was inherited. I think most people don’t at least consciously have that feeling any more.

It used to happen with our dogs…we had three dogs, and one of them would sometimes have seizures from a pancreas condition. The dogs normally got along fine, but during a seizure, the other two dogs would go for the throat. It certainly created a problem.

Well, we don’t have any reaction like that to Alexa whispering! It’s more a “hair on the back of the neck” thing.

Why is it more realistic?

I’m not quite sure…I think there may be fewer variations in whispering. The “uncanny” part may be just because it is coming from a box, rather than a human.

It’s an ongoing issue with artificial intelligence, and especially with XR (augmented/virtual reality).

The alternative Nobel Prize in literature

Who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature this year?

No one.

The Nobel was in disarray when the Significant Other of one of the Academy members was sentenced for sexual assault, so they decided not to award one (although it’s possible they’ll award one next year which at least includes titles from this year).

In its stead, a “New Academy” (formed earlier this year) awarded a prize…it went to

Do you want to pass along your congratulations? Have you ever seen a Little Free Library? Have you use one? If you are using Alexa Whisper Mode, does it fall into that uncanny valley for you? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

This year’s sweepstakes (at AmazonSmile*) (which started July 3rd) is amazing, with prizes including $50,000, an Alexa-equipped Lexus, and a SmartHome makeover. There are lots of ways to enter, detailed here (at AmazonSmile*). One way is to visit the Prime Day page when logged into your account and stay there for a minute…I’m not sure how many people realize that they are timing you like that…

Giant (really giant) Smile boxes are visiting a few cities, and you can watch online (at AmazonSmile*). My guess? At least one of these will open up to reveal a concert by a top music act which is featured on Prime Music.

Free PC games from Twitch…every day through Prime Day

Try Kindle Unlimited for three months for $0.99

Buy your first Kindle book (there are people who haven’t bought Kindle books? 😉 ) and get a $10 credit for e-books, p-books (paperbooks) and Audible audiobooks on Prime Day

I have an Amazon gift card to spend…but I’m going to wait until Prime Day. 🙂

Did a judge just really expand Fair Use?

I’m not an intellectual property lawyer, but I do follow copyright pretty closely. My natural tendency is to reserve rights for the creator, rather than giving the work to society.

About eight years ago, I explored the idea of making copyright permanent in exchange for much broader Fair Use rights:

decided that a site which used part of a photograph that it had found on the internet did not infringe upon the photographer’s rights.

Fair Use has a number of factors which makes a ruling a bit complicated in terms of setting precedent, but this one does concern me. I need to look at it more closely…

Wanna buy a business?

There are a lot of ways to make money with Amazon…you can get royalties as an author, you can be a third party seller, you do tasks through Amazon Mechanical Turk, you can be an Amazon Flex driver…and now, if you invest $10,000, Amazon will help set you up with a delivery business!

Amazon says you could make up to $300,000…but of course, you could also lose money.

Even with help, running a business isn’t easy. The old saying goes that when you own a business, the business owns you. Even just as a manager (not owner) of a bookstore, I worked…a lot.

I absolutely think this is a good opportunity for the right people! However, unless Amazon does screen very carefully (and they certainly might), a much bigger number of people will fail than succeed…just like in most businesses.

“Wilder’s books are a product of her life experiences and perspective as a settler in America’s 1800s. Her works reflect dated cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people and people of color that contradict modern acceptance, celebration, and understanding of diverse communities.”

This ties directly into an issue I examined in another article from 2010:

I think they probably are doing a safe thing, renaming the award so that it doesn’t tie into a specific person. I would challenge you to name any fiction author who was widely popular at least fifty years ago who didn’t write anything that could be seen as offensive today…

is one of my favorite non-reading Amazon devices…it’s an Echo, but with a screen. Yes, it can show me some commercial videos (movie trailers and such), but I really like how it shows information…and how I can make “videocalls”.

I really like it! It’s not perfect, but it is a whole new class of device. You might think you have enough Echo/Alexa devices, but you might consider swapping out one of your old devices for this one. Look for a bargain (although it may be a bundle) on Prime Day.

I have read many translated books in my time, and assuming that this accurately reflects what the author intended (and my intuition is that it does), it reads as very natural English. Not just in the words, but in the use of idiom…”as the crow flies”, for example. I doubt that the Japanese equivalent term has anything to do with crows. 😉

That one is also available through Kindle Unlimited at time of writing.

Have an opinion on any of these stories? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post. My “day job” activities have started to slow down a bit after being super busy…that will help my responsiveness. Oh, and some of you know about our dogs: Elf got bitten by another dog at the dog park recently. Elf will be okay, but it may be a couple of weeks of recovery (and it’s a difficult time for us…by the way, Elf was literally just sitting there and it was unprovoked). That means no trips to the dog park…which gives me back literally a few hours on both Saturday and Sunday. Definitely not worth it, but it is a reality…

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

In part because of our recent internet outage (but that’s not the only reason), my next book won’t be out on the 10th anniversary of the Kindle on November 19th. I will do a special post (a “First Decade Snapshot”?) which will commemorate it, and will perhaps serve as a preview of the book.

The good news is that means you can still get me your thoughts! My guess is I won’t publish it before December 1st, and it might be a week or so into that month.

I would have liked to have had it out on November 19th, but it is going to be much bigger than I thought originally. I like how it is shaping up…it was fun to think about “Topaz” files again. 😉

I’m interested in your feedback on that, too, since I’m planning to put 20% of the gross royalties into giveaways on this blog. At $0.99, I get about 35 cents per sale. At $2.99, I get $2.09. I have to double-check that I check all the other boxes, but I think that’s right. So, I have to sell about six times as many at roughly a dollar than at roughly three dollars to have volume outweigh the price point. I’m ignoring, in this calculation, royalties from KU. Any thoughts?

It just simply wasn’t going to be ready. It’s not easy to make the decision to hold it back (I’ll potentially miss out on some publicity, and I’m likely to miss Black Friday interest), but I didn’t want to put out something that was clearly incomplete. It’s more important to me that people get value out of it than that it gets the maximum sales.

On the bad side: my Significant Other has to put up with my focus on the book for longer. 😉

Meanwhile, at Barnes & Noble…

On Thursday, November 30th (a week after Black Friday this year), at 10:00 AM Eastern, Barnes & Noble will announce their Second Quarter financials.

The morning timing is interesting…if companies expect to report bad numbers, they sometimes want to do it when the market is closed (to minimize the one day market stock impact). It’s possible that the numbers aren’t all bad…although I don’t expect the NOOK line to have recovered much.

The Seat of the Soul (25th Anniversary Edition with a Study Guide) by Gary Zukav

Signed Editions for Teens

Thirteen Reasons Why (10th Anniversary Edition) by Jay Asher

The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

Girling Up by Mayim Bialik

One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake

The Twisted Ones (Five Nights at Freddy’s) by Scott Cawthon

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart

Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas

Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco

Renegades by Marissa Meyer

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Otherworld by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy by Serena Valentino

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

The Book Thief (Special Anniversary Edition) by Markus Zusak

Signed Editions for Young Readers

Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

Serafina and the Splintered Heart by Robert Beatty

Minecraft: The Island by Max Brooks

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

The Land of Stories: Worlds Collide by Chris Colfer

Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland

Spy School Secret Service (B&N Exclusive Edition) (Spy School Series #5) by Stuart Gibbs

The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris

I Got This: To Gold and Beyond by Laurie Hernandez

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney

The Giver by Lois Lowry

In the Deep Blue Sea: Jack and the Geniuses Book #2 by Bill Nye

Wonder B&N Exclusive Edition by R. J. Palacio

The Dark Prophecy (B&N Exclusive Edition) (The Trials of Apollo Series #2) by Rick Riordan

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 3: The Ship of the Dead by Rick Riordan

The Bad Beginning: Book the First (A Series of Unfortunate Events) by Lemony Snicket

Little Bigfoot, Big City (B&N Exclusive Edition) by Jennifer Weiner

The Audition by Maddie Ziegler

Signed Editions for Kids

Gingerbread Christmas by Jan Brett

River Rose and the Magical Christmas by Kelly Clarkson

She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton

The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors by Drew Daywalt

Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes by Kimberly and James Dean

Through Your Eyes: My Child’s Gift to Me by Ainsley Earhardt

Princesses Wear Pants by Savannah Guthrie

My Journey to the Stars by Scott Kelly

Be Brave Little One by Marianne Richmond

Mighty, Mighty Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker

The Polar Express 30th Anniversary Edition by Chris Van Allsburg

The Thank You Book (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems

This is genuinely a reason to visit a Barnes & Noble.

Now that Amazon has physical bookstores, I’ve wondered if they’ll start doing book signings…I’ve seen (and been impressed by) the new one in Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek (across the Bay from San Francisco), California:

They had a number of things that people have come to associate with bookstores…coffee and comfy chairs, for two. Book signings could make sense…

What do you think? Are Amazon bookstores too small for book signings? Are signed books exciting for you personally? As gifts? What do you think will come out of Barnes & Noble’s financial report? $0.99 or $2.99 for Because of the Kindle? What do you think has happened (for you and for the world) Because of the Kindle? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

** A Kindle with text-to-speech can read any text downloaded to it…unless that access is blocked by the publisher inserting code into the file to prevent it. That’s why you can have the device read personal documents to you (I’ve done that). I believe that this sort of access blocking disproportionately disadvantages the disabled, although I also believe it is legal (provided that there is at least one accessible version of each e-book available, however, that one can require a certification of disability). For that reason, I don’t deliberately link to books which block TTS access here (although it may happen accidentally, particularly if the access is blocked after I’ve linked it). I do believe this is a personal decision, and there are legitimate arguments for purchasing those books.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

However, another “debate” is whether or not Ishiguro is a science fiction/fantasy author.

Of course yes.

The Buried Giant is a fantasy novel. Never Let Me Go is a science fiction novel.

There are literati who just aren’t going to accept that, though. They don’t think science fiction/fantasy can be great literature. There may even be a “class ceiling” which functions as a Catch-22. If science fiction can’t be great literature, than once a science fiction novel becomes too good, it is no longer science fiction, but “literary fiction” which winks/nods at science fiction.

I think that’s what is happening here for some of those who are even debating it.

Pretend it’s the end of the semester in a college literature class.

Student 1: “Which one was your favorite author?”

Student 2: “I liked the ghost story.”

Student 3: “I liked the post-apocalyptic super plague story.”

Student 4: “My favorite was the time travel comedy.”

Student 1: “I liked that one who did the story with the witches, the ghost Dad, and the Fae-shifter one.”

It seems that, for some reason, classical music and opera have never seen fantasy elements as a disqualifier for being quality.

I do find the selection of Ishiguro, following Bob Dylan’s pick last year, fascinating. It perhaps suggest some evolution in the selection process, although this is certainly not the first Nobel laureate who has written small “f” fantasy (Rudyard Kipling won, for example, whose works include not only Fantasy, but works that are clearly science fiction, set in the future and exploring the impact of technology).

Still, it is an interesting choice and may get more people to try Kazuo Ishiguro’s unique fiction…however they categorize it.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

**I am not linking to this book because the publisher has chosen to block text-to-speech access. A Kindle with text-to-speech can read any text downloaded to it…unless that access is blocked by the publisher inserting code into the file to prevent it. That’s why you can have the device read personal documents to you (I’ve done that). I believe that this sort of access blocking disproportionately disadvantages the disabled, although I also believe it is legal (provided that there is at least one accessible version of each e-book available, however, that one can require a certification of disability). For that reason, I don’t deliberately link to books which block TTS access here (although it may happen accidentally, particularly if the access is blocked after I’ve linked it). I do believe this is a personal decision, and there are legitimate arguments for purchasing those books.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

has 90 (!) titles in what they are calling “Enticing reads on Kindle, $1.99 & up”.

There are a lot of great titles here, and some well-known books and authors. Remember that you can buy these today, and either delay delivery until the appropriate gift-giving occasion, or send them to yourself and print them out to give (even wrapped) whenever you want. Check the price before you click, tap, or eye gaze (and I have now bought a book when I was in Virtual Reality from Amazon, although I did “tap” using my Samsung Gear VR headset (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)…Oculus added their own browser, and it worked there. I was also able to read part of a book at Project Gutenberg, although it meant I had to tap the side of my headset a lot to “click”, which was distracting at this point…it’s possible I’d get used to it…but I’m guessing there will be a good reading experience, possibly from Amazon, within a year) that Buy Button: the prices may not apply in your country, for one thing.

Follow Kris Calvin on Amazon (to my knowledge, all that you’ll get is a notification when Kris publishes a new book in the Kindle store, although I don’t know that for sure…that’s all I’ve ever seen for authors I follow, I think. Kris is working on the second book in the Maren Kane mystery series.

Start:May 20, 2017 5:20 AM PDT

End:May 27, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

Thanks to the hundreds of people who have entered my previous giveaways for a chance to win Kris’ book! I don’t benefit directly from Kris’ book, although we have had a lot of conversations about it. 🙂

Winner:Randomly selected after Giveaway has ended, up to 1 winner.Requirements for participation:Resident of the 50 United States or the District of ColumbiaFollow @TMCGTT on twitter18+ years of age (or legal age)

It’s going on that long in part so that it covers the actual 40th anniversary of Star Wars (of the release in the USA) on May 25th 2017. Also, this book, which has good reviews and is new, is $14.99 in the Kindle edition…which is a lot for me for a giveaway. 🙂

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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I do love the tech involved in Amazon’s hardware, but I’m always going to love those books! After all, I’m a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager…they used to be my bread and butter, so to speak, however, I loved books before that, too. 🙂

That’s why one of the most intriguing things for me each year is when Amazon does their “Best Books of the Year”…and here it is!

These are all editorial picks, meaning that human beings made the selections. 🙂 There are 100 best Kindle book and 100 best print books, but because they do the best in categories (and holiday picks and celebrity picks and…) there are more than that.

One thing that can happen with curated book lists is that a relatively obscure book can suddenly become a big seller through discovery.

For example, there is a book on the list with only eight customer reviews, ranked #26,240 paid in the Kindle store:

Now, it’s reasonable to point out that the book was just released November 15th, which has something to do with the number of reviews…but at AmazonSmile* Zadie Smith isn’t even released yet, and is ranked #581 (due to pre-sales). Reviews are not allowed yet, though. Beyond Earth sounds interesting…it’s non-fiction about the future of space travel (including Jeff Bezos’ efforts), and looking at Titan (one of Saturn’s moons) as a destination perhaps preferable to Mars. That one is going on my wish list…not Titan, but the book. 🙂

members. That increases the chances that they’ll show up in Prime Reading at some point (making them free to borrow for some Prime Members).

The more than forty celebrities are an intriguing, eclectic bunch! From Anne Rice to Padma Lakshmi through Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, I love seeing the books (especially the older ones, like Lenny Lawson’s pick of The Color Magic (Discworld) by Terry Pratchett). Click on a celebrity to see their comments about the book.

Another nice section is the Editors’ Holiday Gift Picks. The categories (and I like the names of them) are:

Little Bookworms

Fun & Quirky

Eat, Drink, Read

Young (Adult) at Heart

Fantastic Fiction

Nothing But the Truth

Coffee Table Eye Candy

Cops & Crooks

Secrets of Success

Design, Construct, Create

Not surprisingly, there are some books in “Fun & Quirky” that really caught my eye!

Some from there:

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras (based on a wonderful website)

100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get By Without Even Trying by Sarah Cooper

When Amazon sent me the press release, they were nice enough to ask if I would like to speak with the Editors about it. I’ve enjoyed doing that before, but I wanted to give you the opportunity. Are there questions you would like to ask the Editors based on the list? If you do, please comment on this post. There is no guarantee that they’ll take the questions, but I’d like to send them three from my readers and see if they’ll answer them. If so, I’ll publish the answers here. Of course, by posting the comments, you are giving me permission to send them to Amazon without compensation.

If you have other comments too, feel free to share them with me and my readers!

I would think I can’t wait long to send them: I’m going to make your cutoff noon Pacific time on this Friday, November 18th.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

Barnes & Nobles announced the “departure” of its Chief Executive Officer, Ronald D. Boire (after not quite a year in the post).

This is being reported both as Boire being fired, and as Boire “stepping down”…but regardless, this is a negative for the Big 5 traditional publishers (who are still reliant on brick and mortar bookstores…I’m a former manager of one). Nobody who is already established in business likes uncertainty, and this is B&N’s third CEO recently.

One of my proudest things after I became the training manager at a franchise (where I think we had five owners in seven years…something like that) was that I lengthened the average longevity of my team significantly. When I was hired there, I was told there was a ninety-day “ramp up” period. I asked how many people didn’t get through that period, and I was told two out of three! Sure enough, I was hired with two other people, and I was the only person still there after three months.

That’s just…inefficient hiring, in my opinion.

I’ve hired a lot of people over the years, and I think I’m pretty good at it.

After I was the Training Manager for a year, the average longevity went from under three months to over a years, as I recall…basically, nobody left. Yes, I hired people during that year, but not that many because turnover was low. If I hired them, they stayed.

If the Board hired somebody who wasn’t a good fit, that’s likely to be mostly their fault.

This is odd timing, because we are heading into the most important time of the year…the last three months of the year, in a retail business like this, can easily be 90% of the year’s sales.

Maybe if Boire had made it a full year, the departure would have cost them more?

Replacing the CEO at the end of August is a little bit like replacing your pilot while your plane is at the gate readying for takeoff. 😉

However, Leonard Riggio, who was going to retire in a few weeks (Riggio has been a driving force at B&N since buying the company forty-five years ago) is going to take the helm for now.

The publishers may see that as a good thing…they understand Riggio, even if the leadership is only temporary and therefore limited in determining the strategic direction.

B&N has had some good signs recently…none of them said “Books for Sale in Our Stores”, though. 😉 The strategy has been to move the stores more into other things (especially the cafes), cut back on the NOOK even more, and try to remake the online presence. Those strategies aren’t likely to change.

“The recent growth in sales is a result of the waning novelty of e-readers, such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle…”

On the other hand, Hu is more likely to be right than another authority they quote…Ronald D. Boire, the aforementioned outgoing CEO of Barnes & Noble. 😉

Are audiobooks cheating?

Regular readers know I listen to text-to-speech (software which reads books out loud to you) a lot. It’s typically hours a week in the car. I sight read every day, too…on my now discontinued Kindle Fire HDX (that’s what does the text-to-speech in the car for me), on a

The bio states that Willingham is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia.

Willingham addresses the idea of whether or not listening to an audiobook is “cheating”.

I was actually hoping for an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) study showing that what the brain was doing was similar during sight-reading and listening, but the post isn’t that.

It’s talking more about the process, and how it will “mostly” be the same (although there may be an advantage when reading more complex material to sight-reading it, an adult reading a typical novel should be pretty much the same).

It was interesting to me that the article was at least partly what I would consider to be philosophical…questioning the value of defining reading as “work”, something to be more rewarded when you put something more into it.

I do think some “literati” have that attitude: if a book was harder to read, it was better for you and more worthwhile.

I don’t buy that myself.

I think there is value in reading a “popcorn book”, one which reads with little effort. People used to (and some still do) call them “page turners”, although “button masher” became the digital equivalent for a short time (when was they last time you used buttons to “turn the page” on an e-book reader?).

In fact, and maybe I am a bit of a lazy reader in this regard, I tend not to like very “dense” epics…I describe them as when the sentence is better than the paragraph, the paragraph is better than the page, the page is better than the chapter, and the chapter is better than the book. 😉

You know the type…I would put The Worm Ouroborus by E.R. Eddison into that category.

Still, it’s nice to know that a professor of psychology has the opinion that listening to an audiobook isn’t cheating. 🙂 I intend to comment on the blog post (if the requirements to do so are not overly restrictive) to ask about text-to-speech versus audiobooks…I suspect that the TTS cognitive processing is much more similar to sight-reading than audiobooks are. I’d be interested to hear what the professor thinks about that…and about the fact that I generally don’t experience prosody (hearing voices when you read). 🙂

What do you think? Have you thought of listening to books as “cheating”? Will Barnes & Noble continue to have physical bookselling in dedicated brick-and-mortar stores as a major component of their business? If they don’t, what does that mean for tradpubs? Why do you think brick-and-mortar bookstores have been rebounding? Is it because of a decline in e-book use…or maybe it’s coloring books? 😉 Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

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The Hugo Awards (named after Hugo Gernsbeck) are one of the most prestigious science fiction awards out there.

Past winners include Dune, The Man in the High Castle, and Stranger in a Strange Land.

There has been quite a bit of controversy in the last couple of years, as a couple of groups have made an effort to get the results that they want. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing, when I put it that way…but many people disagree with the apparent agenda of those groups.

The Hugo Awards have addressed this in part by having a “No Award” choice. Last year, it was a big impact…this year, not as much. It’s reasonable to conclude that the awards actually given this year do not align with the groups’ objectives.

I mention all this because the campaigns make some people question the legitimacy of the awards. That’s always true with awards, of course, but I would say that the Hugos certainly were an indicator of high quality for many geeks like me.

I was curious, so I checked: I’ve read most of the novel winners from the 1950s through the 1980s…not as much after that.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t consider those later novels worthy, not at all…I would say that it is more that I diversified my reading quite a bit.

If you are looking for a quality science fiction/fantasy read (or watch or listen…they do more than just literature), I think that using the Hugos is not a bad data point in making your decision.

Here are this year’s winners (awarded Saturday night, August 20th at MidAmeriCon II):

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

“Stephen King for his contributions as an author. One of the most popular and prolific writers of our time, Mr. King combines his remarkable storytelling with his sharp analysis of human nature. For decades, his works of horror, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy have terrified and delighted audiences around the world. (Bangor, ME)”

Looking back through a list of the recipients, I didn’t see a lot of people who would be found primarily in the science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror sections of a bookstore:

Ralph Ellison

Eudora Welty

Howard Nemerov

Robert Penn Warren

Saul Bellow

Czelaw Milosz

John Updike

William Styron

Maurice Sendak (yes, geek-friendly…although putative children’s books feel like they have more latitude to employ fantasy elements and still be respected)

Philip Roth

Maya Angelou

Ray Bradbury (so King’s award is not unprecedented for a primarily genre author)

has a legitimate case for being the “great American novel”…but I don’t expect the President and the National Endowment for the Arts to think so. 😉

That certainly may just show my own prejudice. I grew up with it being a matter of social shame to be a geek.

That’s not the case now.

Look at the top grossing movies, the most popular televisions shows…undeniably, mainstream audience grok the geek.

In those visual media fields, respected awards have been coming more and more to geek-friendly works and artists. Oscar winners feel no concern about appearing in a fantasy/science fiction/horror movie (or, even more shocking, TV show) these days.

However, for the types of people who would even sneer at the idea of watching a video, to recognize the authors of books with vampires and robots? That feels new.

I wouldn’t say that we are entirely there…and, I’m not convinced that geeks really want to be there.

What do you think? Is there still a stigma in being a “genre author”? When I say “genre”, do you think geeky, or do you include romance and Westerns, among others? Are works with fantasy/science fiction elements inherently less “honorable” than works with more realistic settings? If you think that the acceptability has changed, why do you think that is? Is it just the popularity? Should that influence merit awards? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

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